Motivational books are full of tips on how to overcome procrastination. Even I have written something about it. Now the question is why procrastination means that you do not care about your life. Let me give you some examples:

You lose great opportunities which could have been taken advantage of,

You meet the negative consequences of your attitude – the boss is angry, your family are angry or disappointed,

At the end of your life, you will regret the missed opportunities of your whole life

Procrastination deploys you from the precious energy because of constantly thinking of the undone task and the fear of the consequences of not taking action as soon as possible.

While procrastinating, you do not respect your time and energy, not only wasting it for other activities but because of obsessive thinking of the overdue task instead of creating a brilliant future.

7. Talking Bad About Other People

We like talking about other people, especially while having no own life. Sometimes chatting with your friend helps you to release the negative emotions. However, the energy which you create because of negative talking deprives you of happiness.

It is allowed to talk about other people, but good things. If there are problems, address to the challenging situation instead of complaining or transferring your negative emotions like anger to the listener.

In case of talking bad about other people, you generate bad karma which will be repaid later because what you have sown will be reaped later. Bad talking not only insults the person which is the topic of your conversation but also floods the listener with negativity. No one wants to listen about negative things, especially when they know the person from the good side.

Again you waste your precious time and energy for creating negativity instead of your brilliant future.

8. Negative Thinking About Yourself

This is probably the most common and one of the most serious cases when you do not respect yourself. As everything starts from thinking, all the rest of cases are just derivates. Negative thinking is one of the most complex issues and many self-development books are fully written about this one question. Therefore, I will write about three separate causes which have one common source: negative thinking.

The first is thinking itself, without specifying the type of it. Doctor Burnes presents ten types of distorted thinking and most of them can be classified as separate cases when lack of self-care is your sin. Let me mention some:

Catastrophizing

This is a kind of thinking that has two phases. The first one is predicting a negative outcome. You become a clairvoyant of pessimistic future. The second part means that you jump to the conclusion that if the negative outcome did in fact happen, it would be a catastrophe.

Magnification or Minimalization

Also known as the “Binocular Trick” for its stealthy skewing of your perspective, this distortion involves exaggerating the importance or meaning of things or minimizing the importance or meaning of things.

Black-and-white Thinking

Also known as “All-Or-Nothing,” this kind of thinking manifests as an inability or unwillingness to see shades of gray. In other words, you see things in terms of extremes – something is either fantastic or awful, you are either perfect or a total failure.

Personalization

As the name implies, this distortion involves taking everything personally or assigning blame to yourself for no logical reason to believe you are to blame.

Negative thinking is a total lack of respect for your time, energy and even health. As thoughts are the beginning of everything, negativity will manifest in negative opportunities and situations in your life. Then you might need even more energy and hard work with your mind to fix the consequences of your previous thought patterns.

9. Worrying

Worrying is a kind of constant catastrophizing. It focuses on the future which will be gloomy and tragic. This kind of thinking is triggered by anxiety and traumas in the past. So if you are an abused woman and your past relationships were full of violence, even shouting will trigger worrying starting with “what if…”

You do not care about your life while worrying due to focusing on negativity instead of creating a brilliant future. Remember that every day you have the limited amount of energy – the fuel which you can use for various purposes. it is not wise to waste this precious energy for worrying. You cannot foresee what will be tomorrow as often unexpected situations happen out of the blue, changing your life rhythm.

10. Ruminating Over the Past

This is the last but not least case when you do not respect yourself. In this case, the past is everything, you can think for hours about the same things, for example:

Beating yourself for the mistakes – what you should have done better or should not have done,

Tearing out the wounds

Feeding negative emotions which become inadequate to the real situation that had happened.

These are not all the examples of rumination, but each of them can be discussed million times. Now, why you do not respect yourself while ruminating? Again your precious energy is being wasted. Moreover, you attract similar people now, even if they are already dead or even worse – your current relationships with them are still as bad as in your ruminated thoughts and feelings. Now think of your friends and family members who act exactly according to your rumination.

In a Nutshell

Today you have met the five more cases when you do not respect yourself, wasting your precious energy for rumination, negative thinking, talking negatively about other people, and worrying.

Action Exercise

Now the time has come for your personal balance sheet and planning to take action if lack of respect is your challenge. Read this and my previous post again and define the areas which need some change. Then set realistic goals and start transforming your life.